No civilization would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.

The strength of even the strongest individual can always be overpowered by the many, who often will combine for no other purpose than to ruin strength precisely because of its peculiar independence.

Jefferson, though the secret vote was still unknown at the time had at least a foreboding of how dangerous it might be to allow the people to share a public power without providing them at the same time with more public space than the ballot box and with more opportunity to make their voices heard in public than on election day. What he perceived to be the mortal danger to the republic was that the Constitution had given all power to the citizens, without giving them the opportunity of being citizens and of acting as citizens.

For the possibilities of being different from what one is are infinite. Once one has negated oneself, however, there are no longer any particular choices.

The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility - of being unable to undo what one has done - is the faculty of forgiving.

The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition.

It is in the nature of a group and its power to turn against independence, the property of individual strength.